Darker Than Love | ꪜ

Update + upcoming plans

Hello my lovely readers! Today, Darker Than Love has hit one million reads! When I first wrote this book in 2017, I truly never saw the day it would hit one million. It wasn't my goal nor did I care for it to be popular. I just wanted to write and write and write until my fingers fell off. But here we are and I couldn't be happier 😫😭

BUT. . .As happy as I am, there's something not many people know about me regarding this novel.

I absolutely hate it.

Yes, yes I hate it. Why do I hate my own book? Well because I've grown up. When I wrote this book, toxic relationships were all the rage. At the time I was 14 years old and truly did not know any better regarding such relationships.

In the beginning, I wrote this novel and was inspired by the movie Wuthering High which revolves around an extremely toxic relationship.

I idolized it because social media and shows like *cough cough* Riverdale 🙄 Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries and the list goes on and on and on. They all glamorized extremely dangerous and toxic relationships to the point where as a young girl, my impressionable mind thought that it was something to glamorize.

But alas it most definitely was not.

I grew up and as I got older (I'm 19 now) I realized how disgusting Michelle's and Mason relationship is to the point where I contemplated deleting this entire book because it does not represent the person that I am today.

I rewrote this book and Mason's character. For new readers, you know he suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder but in the original version he was just a toxic asshole who loved toying with Michelle and just being a complete jackass because he could.

Like I've stated many times, the whole point of this novel was to show readers the reality of toxic relationships. Yes they exist, and although this book is 90% fiction and 10% real, it still kind of showcases the reality that most people experience every day.

There are people like Mason and Michelle in real life who toy with one another just because they can and it can't be hidden.

Where I went wrong was allowing them to remain a couple in the end. I know a lot of readers loved the ending and they adore this couple but the reality of this situation is, in real life these types of relationships rarely end happily and that's where fiction overtakes reality.

I started to fear that I now became part of the problem where social media influences young women into thinking that toxic relationships is something to idolize because it most definitely is not.

Mason and Michelle most definitely are in a toxic relationship and I wish that in the beginning I had never written this book.

Because despite rewriting it to the best of my ability and letting everyone know that one: Mason suffers from a disorder that generally does not allow him to have control over his actions all the time and two; this book is now to bring awareness to these types of relationships: It still left me with a bitter taste in my mouth because I allowed them to remain a couple in the end.

I showed no progress in their character development. I showed no consequences to their actions nor did I show them trying to overcome their issues to create a healthy relationship. Unlike my novel Mr Kingston's Roommate, I actually allowed my readers to go on a journey of self reflection and acceptance before the main couple took their relationship further and this is where I failed Darker Than Love.

Yes there are toxic relationships in real life and I'm not saying that they all end badly but neither do they all end good. I wish that I took the extra measure to show how they got to the point that they were at in the final chapter and epilogue because obviously their issues did not entirely dissolve because of a life and death situation.

At the end of the day, Mason still suffers from a mental disorder and Michelle still has personality issues of her own.

So with all that said, I'm contemplating whether or not I should remove this book from the platform, rewrite it AGAIN or create a completely different book with the same characters but I now put them in a more realistic version of this story. And by realistic I mean no gangs, no backstabbing father 🙄 no batshit crazy exes and so forth.

Just a story between two young adults navigating through a toxic relationship as they learn how to love themselves, one another and in turn, build a HEALTHY relationship.

Tell me what you guys think I should do! I could really use the insight because I'm torn! This is the first novel I wrote on Wattpad and I really do not want to delete it but neither do I want to keep pushing the message that it has.

Thank you guys for taking your time to read this!

All love ❤️